London Banter - View Single Post

Robin9 · October 19th 16, 08:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by

In article ,
(Robin9) wrote:

*Subject:* Is Uber Bleeding to Death?
*From:* Robin9
*Date:* Tue, 18 Oct 2016 11:00:55 +0200

Roland Perry;158741 Wrote:
In message , at
16:57:38 on Mon, 17 Oct 2016, David Cantrell
remarked:
-
If you think about it - if cab companies owned (or even rented a
fleet)
of cars and rented them out to drivers, those cars would have their
branding on. At least their name and phone number. That's rare in
London. Most mini-cabs have no branding on them at all.-

Addison Lee being one the few which do.

Exactly. One of the very few.

One of the few firms, sure, but what proportion of the hire cars?

With almost all minicab firms in London, the driver obtains
the car himself - by buying, by leasing, by renting on a
week-to-week basis - and the car is effectively his to work
with wherever and with whomever he wants.

How large are such fleets though?

--
Colin Rosenstiel

Most minicab firms in London are quite small. The cab
firm at a suburban station may have only about forty
drivers. I've been told that Clarks at South Woodford
Station has about half that number and that Masons at
Woodford Station has about twice that number. There
is a handful of conventional cab firms - i.e. catering to
the general public on a cash basis - which are substantially
larger: e.g. Greyhound, The Keen Group, GLH.

There are also cab firms which deal exclusively with account
customers, 99 per cent of which are organisations. These cab
firms have their own fleet which their drivers have to use.
Addison Lee has an enormous account portfolio but also has
numerous cash customers. At one time they had about 1000
drivers, all using Addison Lee vehicles.

If there are 80,000 minicab drivers in London, even Addison
Lee's share is a small percentage.